This is not an official news source for CineForm or GoPro product releases, just some bits and pieces of stuff I happen to be working on. My work and hobbies are pretty much the same thing. -- David Newman

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Already the rumors are flying on DVInfo.net so lets sort them out here. Firstly, Aspect HD has been upgraded to support Premiere Pro 2.0 (finalizing its beta testing); the version of Aspect HD needed for this is 4.0 (which will also continue to run on Premiere 1.5.) Adding Aspect HD to Premiere 2.0 is in no way impacted by Adobe's choice to remove the "free" (well it wasn't totally "free" for Adobe) CineForm components from the Premiere release. It should actually make things easier for CineForm (users will no longer confuse the free components with the Aspect HD tools, causing unnecessary technical support issues.) The second issue: now that Adobe has "native" MPEG editing, what does that mean for CineForm. At first we were disappointed in Adobe's discision, for about five minutes, then we realized how much this will benefit CineForm. We already have significant brand recognition thanks to partners like Adobe and Sony. Aspect HD has a good market share, but now the performance gap has increased in Aspect HD's favor -- previously CineForm was completing against it own tools, now it has a clear lead, as it does against any "native" MPEG system.

I want to point out that I believe this makes the CineForm-Adobe relationship stronger. We aren't really in competition, every Aspect HD and Prospect HD sale is a customer using Premiere Pro. CineForm helps Premiere Pro shine in the higher end production and indie film markets, particularly as Prospect HD is one of the standard solutions in Adobe's Open HD initiative. The Adobe sales team are very complementary towards CineForm tools, often using Aspect HD to demonstration Premiere Pro at tradeshows. Having a lot of CineForm components within Premiere did create some tension, as I sure Adobe had hoped we would be make a "free" version of Aspect HD, yet our own pipeline was a faster than theirs and they didn't license that -- we don't get our speed from the codec alone. So I feel there was disappointment on both sides with the 1.5.1 relationship, but now that 2.0 is here, we see an excellent partnership moving forward.

Premiere Pro 2.0 gives us a lot of opportunity to grow, in new features and market share. Adobe continues to provide the best third party plug-in interface of any of NLEs, this is why they have more acceleration options than any other vendor. Now that the rendering engine within Premiere 2.0 has extending beyond 8-bit, Prospect HD has much more room to grow adding great post-production features. We will be shortly be releasing Prospect HD 2.0 to start down the path of expanding the deep color experience -- previous only CineForm filters provided 16-bit color with PHD. Prospect HD 2.0 will be backwards compatible with 1.5.1, allow customers to upgrade there NLE whenever they need.

We have $499 software for those who don't need 10-bit, but for those who do, nothing is less-expoensive than CineForm for a complete RT HD solution. So our pricing is based on feature support, competition, and on creating a healthy business. Prospect HD starts at $1999, with that you can post many feature films, pretty much a bargin.

Think about what you would pay for storage for a 7TB Xserve RAID to post your feature film in uncompressed . . . Propsect HD gives you the quality of uncompressed, but without the space requirements, and the added bonus of a lot of real-time feedback with multi-stream effects, etc. that you would pay lots of money to-do in uncompressed.